Play That Song Again
by Indigo-Night-Wisp
Summary: The story of Nicholas Braddock-Wilson and Laura Howlett, told through parentheses and pop culture, in a non-linear narrative.


**Disclaimer: "And, Will… nice hat." –Captain Jack Sparrow**

**A/N: Another for the Dark Lord! Featuring Nicholas and Laura. Enjoy, all.**

* * *

Nicholas Braddock-Wilson is nineteen years old, just back from a jaunt to the past, slightly traumatized, and his girlfriend is not taking this as seriously as he thinks she should.

"They were _hot_, Laura, do you understand me? As in, highly attractive. As in, extremely beautiful."

"Yes."

"Laura, _my aunts are hot_."

"So are your uncles."

He stares at her. "Laura, you're supposed to be jealous, not tell me that _my uncles are hot, too_."

She shrugs. "Why? They are."

Nick shakes his head despairingly. "We are not like other couples."

Laura hums and pats him on the head. "There, there," she says.

Nick groans.

000

Laura is twenty-seven years old, and she hasn't been home in a very, very long time. Seven years, to be exact.

(If anyone asks, she was hunting down Hydra agents and destroying them systematically, tearing out their livers.

Actually, she only did that three times, and the rest of the time she has been traveling, studying, and learning about all of the pop culture she missed out on while being raised as a human weapon.

She likes French food, and her favorite movie is _Miss Congeniality_.)

The point, is it's been a long time since Laura has been at the Institute, which is why she's somewhat startled when the first thing she sees upon arrival is a tiny bundle of wild-eyed fury, waving a pair of katana in her direction.

She'd known that Wade and Betsy had had a baby. Had had _the _baby, Nicholas, who had come back in time and drawn them all into a week of matchmaking after he broke his parents up. That was eight years ago. Laura had consulted the internet and discovered that the Proper Thing To Do in this case was to send a card, so that's what she'd done.

Admittedly, it probably shouldn't have said _Congratulations on Your New Little Monster, _but the guy at the store had said it would be perfect, and she hadn't known better than to not trust his obviously expert opinion.

"Who goes there?" little Nicholas shouted at her. She frowns in confusion.

"My name is Laura," she says. He hesitates, bewildered.

"You're supposed to say, 'Friend'," he says. She thinks for a moment, privately delighting in this little version of the young man she had met eight years ago.

"Oh," she says, "but you did not ask 'friend or foe.' You only asked 'who goes there?'."

He looks surprised, as though he hasn't thought of this. Laura can't help but smirk a little as she continues on into the mansion. He doesn't try to stop her.

"It's nice to meet you, Nicholas," she calls over her shoulder as she goes.

000

Nick is seventeen years old, and he's more than a little bit in love with a woman twenty years older than him.

("You do realize that she's twenty years older than you, right?" Logan asked him.

Nick shrugged. "Yeah? So?"

"Just checking."

The fact that she's Logan's daughter wasn't really an issue. Nick wouldn't understand why it would be a problem, and Logan didn't really care all that much in the first place.)

The thing is, it's sort of hard to remember all the time that Laura is so much older than him. For one thing, the healing factor of her mutation ensures that she doesn't _look _her age. For another, she doesn't act her age _at all_.

"Teach me how to skateboard," she demands one morning, appearing in his bedroom apparently by magic, since he didn't hear the door, the window, or any other sort of entrance opening.

Nick sticks his head out of the blankets and stares at her. "It is," he says, "five-thirty in the morning."

"Yes," she says.

And this is how Nick knows he's in love with her, because if any other person had woken him at 5:30 AM to make him teach them how to skateboard, he would have killed them. Or possibly just tossed them out of the window, but depending on who it was, that could kill them.

Instead, Nick groans and sits up, rubbing his face. "Okay," he says, trying as hard as he can not to blush from head to toe at the fact that she's just standing there, staring at him, and he can't remember if he put on pajama bottoms last night.

He checks, surreptitiously, and breathes a sigh of relief as he realizes that he did.

Laura looks at him in amusement. "I'll wait outside," she offers graciously, sweeping out of the room and greeting his father with a polite, "Hello, Wade," as she passes him in the hallway.

Nick's father peeks in the door and winks at his son, giving him a thumbs up. Nick groans.

He teaches her to skateboard in an old park that doesn't get a lot of use these days. He'd asked Uncle Kurt to come along and help, but when he'd mentioned that they were going to the skate park, Uncle Kurt had started laughing and hadn't stopped, so that was out.

Laura wobbles for about a minute before getting the hang of it and gliding around like she's been doing it all her life. Nick is instantly suspicious.

"Laura," he says, "do you know how to skateboard?"

She pauses and steps off of the board. "Yes," she says calmly.

He nods. "Did you know before I showed you?"

"Yes," she replies, stepping closer to him, tilting her head up to stare at his face. She's so much shorter than he is. So tiny. He feels like he could break her with one hand, even though he knows exactly the opposite is true.

"Why did you ask me to teach you to do something you already knew how to do?" he asks, holding his breath, barely hoping.

She tilts her head to the side now, like a little bird. "Is that not what people do?" she asks. "When they want to spend time together?"

Nick lets out the breath he was holding and grins. "Yeah," he says, "yeah, that's what they do."

"Ah," Laura smirks. "Good. I saw it in a movie."

000

Nicholas Braddock-Wilson is seventeen years old and he thinks he just went out on a date.

"Dad," he asks Wade, ignoring the way there are pieces of robots flying around both of their heads, "how do you know if you're dating someone?"

Wade spins around and neatly decapitates his forty-third robot of the night. "Well, son," he says, "usually you spend a lot of time alone together and do date-like things together."

"Huh. Like… skateboarding?"

"What? Yeah, sure, I guess."

They fight on in silence for a moment, punctuated by occasional squeals of angry metal.

"Dad?"

"Yeah?"

"What should I do if I wanna take a girl on a date?"

"Ummm…" Wade wishes vaguely that it had been Betsy's turn for bonding night. "You… take her out and… do things. Like I said. Date-like, things."

"Like what?" Nick asks, ducking away from a robot laser and telekinetically tossing it into a wall.

"Like…" Wade hesitates. He's never been very good at the whole "dating" thing. "Like, movies," he says, sounding more like he's asking a question. "And fighting." He's firm on that one. Many of his dates with Betsy involve some kind of violence, one way or another.

"Fighting?" Nick sounds skeptical. Wade is almost offended that his son doesn't trust his romantic prowess.

"Yes," he says, hoping that he's right, "like ninja and stuff."

Nick brightens. "I can do ninja," he says.

"Great," Wade huffs, stabbing a huge red robot through its cybernetic eyeball. "You do that. Be home by midnight, 'kay?"

000

Nick is nine years old and he's been staring at Laura for fifteen minutes and counting.

"You're really pretty," he tells her bluntly, innocently cheeky. She blinks at him.

"Thank you."

"I like your hair a lot," he says seriously. "It looks soft. Is it soft?"

"I… think so?" She doesn't really know. She doesn't have much to compare it to.

"Lemme check," he says, and the next thing Laura knows, he's climbing onto the couch next to her to run his tiny hands through her long brown hair.

"Nick, don't!" Betsy tries to stop him, well-aware that Laura is unpredictable when it comes to her personal space. She would much rather not have to re-attach her son's head to his body today, thanks very much.

But Laura doesn't even flinch. She just tilts her head and lets Nick play with her hair, listening with a soft smile as he declares that "It's very soft, I like it."

000

Laura is thirty-nine years old and her boyfriend is overreacting.

"Yes, Nick," she says patiently. "You went to the past. Your aunts are attractive. It happens."

"They're –wait, what? It happens? What do you mean, 'it happens'? Has it happened before? Has it happened to _you_? Laura? _Laura_."

She smirks at him. "Do you want to talk about how hot your aunts are?"

He shudders. "Oh, Dark Lord of the X-Men, _no_."

She nods in satisfaction. "Then let's do something else." She places one hand on his shoulder and jumps, landing with her legs wrapped around his waist. His arms automatically wrap around her back. "I can think of quite a few things we could do instead…"

Nick bites his lip and she grins as she leans in.

000

Nicholas is twenty-three, and Laura likes to look at him.

"You are very attractive," she tells him, perfectly serious. He blushes, which she privately thinks is adorable. They've been a couple for nearly six years, and she can still make him blush as easily as she could when he was sixteen.

He rallies, though, and shoots back, "I like your nose."

Delighted, she counters with, "Your jaw line is aesthetically pleasing."

"Your mouth is ravishing."

"I am especially fond of your shoulders."

"Your hips were sculpted by God."

"Your hair is soft," she teases.

"I like to watch you kill things," he blurts out.

Naturally, she blushes at this.

000

Nick is fifteen and Laura is thirty-five, and he's showing her the movie _Jurassic Park _for the first time.

She's laughing. On screen, people are running and screaming and there's a dinosaur trying to eat them and she's laughing.

Nick is grinning, because she's gorgeous, head back and lips wide and pink as she giggles. He thinks her laugh is his favorite sound in the world.

(_Ewww_, his inner voice sneers. _That sounds sappy._)

000

Nick is eighteen and he's on a date with his girlfriend.

They're killing things.

Well, not killing, exactly. Maiming. Disarming.

_Oooh, good one_, his inner voice smirks.

_Thanks, _Nick thinks back, pleased, as he lops another arm off of a Hydra agent. He supposes that he could feel bad about doing so much damage, but since it is Hydra, he really, really doesn't.

"Do you want to get Chinese and watch the sunset after we're done here?" Laura calls out over the sound of screaming.

"Sure," Nick calls back. Laura gets all of her date ideas from movies. Nick gets his from his dad. Sometimes, he thinks he should probably stop asking Wade for romantic advice.

Then again, Wade's advice of "making a grand romantic gesture" has gotten them here, cleaning out a nest of Hydra agents, and leading to Laura's eyes brightening with battle lust and her lithe body curving and twisting in midair as she performs unnecessary flips and spins.

She's showing off for him.

He grins, watching her with what he knows is a sappy expression on his face.

"Hey, watch it!" she shrieks, claws slicing past his face to take out a Hydra agent behind him. "Pay attention!"

"Uh, sorry!" he says, but she's already gone, dispatching the last of their enemies with a feral smile, teeth bared, bloody.

He's not sure why her teeth are bloody, but he figures he won't ask.

000

Nick is twenty, and his girlfriend just stabbed him through the chest.

"Laura!" Aunt Kitty shrieks, fluttering about them, waving her hands and generally freaking out. Uncle Kurt had taken one look at the gaping chest wound and blanched, teleporting back to the mansion, leaving them on the lawn.

"Auntie," Nick coughs, "I'm fine. I should've known better than to sneak into the Institute anyway." Whenever Laura is home, the Institute's security standards instantly skyrocket, if only because Laura patrols every night and has a tendency to stab anything that tries to sneak in.

"She stabbed you! You're bleeding!"

Nick shrugs. "It happens," he says philosophically. Laura hasn't said anything yet, but she's watching him very closely. "What?" he says to her.

"Are you alright?" she asks quietly. Nick cocks his head to the side and closes one eye, not quite a wink, but not a blink either.

"I'll be just fine," he tells her. "Look," he gestures weakly to his chest, where, sure enough, the two holes left by her adamantium claws are already closing, skin knitting back together and blood sluggishly ceasing to flow.

"Good," she says briskly, suddenly all business, "then you can get up and come join the rest of us for movie night whenever you're ready. We're watching _Tangled_." She stands up and starts back towards the mansion. Kitty gapes after her.

"She does like her Disney," Nick observes, pushing himself up on his elbows as the holes in his chest finally close all the way.

Kitty throws up her hands and stalks away.

000

Laura is forty-five and she's fighting ninja in Central Park with her boyfriend.

"No, _you're _sexy," Nick says back, winking playfully at her as he kicks another ninja in the stomach and does a back flip just for the fun of it.

"I know," she says, flipping her hair over her shoulder and cocking one hip. "You're not so bad yourself."

"Aw, thanks." He swings out with one eskrima stick and knocks a ninja in the head with it. "You know, we should go out after this."

"Yeah?" she asks, lunging with one foot and sweeping the feet out from under a pair of ninja, who fall flat on their backs with the air knocked out of them. Almost daintily, she allows the claw on her right foot to pop out, and then sets her foot down on the chest of one of the ninja. "Please don't move," she says politely.

"I was thinking that French restaurant on 9th might be nice to try out," Nick says casually, coming up beside her.

"Hmmm. I do love French food," she muses.

"Are you _flirting_?" one of their captives gasps, still out of breath.

Laura ignores him. "I want to make out in the car later, too," she says bluntly, tactless as ever.

Nick chokes on his own air and sputters, "Uh, yeah, okay. We can… um, we can definitely do that. Definitely. Absolutely. I am one hundred percent down with that."

_I think she gets it_, his inner voice says dryly.

"They're flirting," the ninja moan, heads dropping back to rest on the ground.

000

Nick is nineteen and he's holding his girlfriend up while she wraps her legs around his waist and he's pretty much forgotten all about the Hot Aunts at this point.

"Hi," he says breathlessly, when Laura's face is barely five inches away from his.

"Hello," she says back, lips curving in a playful smile.

"I like you a lot," he understates honestly. She nudges his nose with her own.

"I like you a lot, as well," she informs him.

"Yeah?"

"Yes."

"Do you wanna be my girlfriend?" he whispers. She raises one eyebrow.

"I was under the impression that I already was your girlfriend."

"Oh." He pauses. "Can I be your boyfriend."

She sighs. "I suppose," she says magnanimously.

"Oh, good," he says, intelligently. She grins at him, almost leering.

"You're sexy," she tells him, just to see him blush. "I like your eyes."

"I like yours, too," he says.

"Also, your chest is very firm and your arms are pleasingly defined."

"Erm," his face is delightfully red. "I… you're… your lips are very soft."

"Yes?" she murmurs, pressing even closer, said lips hovering just above his. "Well yours are _delicious_."

His cheeks flush even further and he bites his lower lip and _that _was what she was waiting for, and then she's kissing him.

* * *

**A/N: And that's it! Hope you liked it. **

**Additional, No-Longer-A-Spoiler Disclaimer: I do not own **_**Miss Congeniality, Jurassic Park, **_**or **_**Tangled.**_


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